Sailor's Delight by Rose Lerner

Author:Rose Lerner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

9

Apple cake stuck in Elie’s throat. Hastily, he guzzled tea. He couldn’t choke now, or he’d miss the rest of the conversation!

“I see,” Miss Turner said triumphantly.

“Of course you shall have the bulk of it,” Brine hurried to add. “There may not be much, after my debts are paid, but—”

“How do you even know what your debts are, except that Mr. Eleazar tells you?”

Elie’s punishment fit his crime, at least.

“I am not quite hopeless at arithmetic,” Brine said coldly.

“I never said you were. I mean, how can you know he quotes you honest prices?”

“Christ, Sarah—”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“I beg your pardon, but the idea of him cheating me is absurd. If that was what he wanted, I have certainly given him plenty of opportunity, and instead he convoys me to a frankly humbling extent. I was dead drunk on Sunday, and he fetched me out of...” He trailed off.

“Let me guess,” said Miss Turner. “A gin-shop.”

“Yes, if you must know. And then he made me a sandwich and read to me out of The Seaman’s Guide and Coaster’s Companion.”

“He...what?”

Elie flushed at Miss Turner’s bemusement, palpable even through the wall.

Brine lost his patience. “You talk as if advancing me money were some trick of his. But what it really means, Sarah, is that I have the use of the money, and he does not! Do you know how many men desert with their agents’ money in their pockets? And their outstanding pay and prize money goes straight to Greenwich Hospital, leaving the agent with a worthless receipt.”

“All the more reason for agents to pad their bills,” Miss Turner said. “Honestly, Augie, I should—” She was clearly about to say I should marry you, and look after your affairs. Elie waited dully.

“Why shouldn’t he have my watch to remember me by?” Brine interrupted. “He bought me the damn thing.”

Emotion surged in Elie’s chest, rushing up his throat and pressing against his skull, like the sea trying to smash through a dike. His ears popped.

“You mean he sold you the watch, Augie,” Miss Turner said with the same tolerant scorn, as though nothing at all had changed. “Kindly remember that I am not a sailor, to be overawed by coarse language. But if it’s only the watch, I suppose there’s no harm in it.”

Some creaking and rustling. “I said he might take what he liked from my personal effects,” Brine said—or Elie thought he did. He was speaking more softly, evidently embarrassed. “And—well—a few odds and ends for the children. I thought the eldest Miss Lazarus might like to have my hat. Do you remember when I bought it? I sent you a drawing, I think, of her wearing it.”

There was a long pause. “Yes,” Miss Turner said slowly, in a less superior voice. “You drew a face on the hat as if it were her head. Yes, I do remember that. So—you have left your agent your keepsakes, and me your money. That is rather backwards, don’t you think?”

Dead silence.

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